Caroline Hannah Goldfarb never dreamed of dating anyone who played the ancient Jewish ram’s horn, not even a pre-eminent shofar player in the Los Angeles area. At the same time, Michael Craig Gropper had never had the slightest interest in social media, much less in an internet personality.
But an impromptu committee of matchmakers, which included cousins and friends who showed up trick-or-treating with four children at the doorstep of Ms. Goldfarb’s stepmother and father on Halloween in 2024, had already decided the two were right for each other.
“A shofar player, really?” Ms. Goldfarb, 35, recalled thinking, accustomed to hearing the blast of the ancient ram’s horn, or shofar, as a spiritual wake-up call while “half asleep and bored out of my gourd,” she said, during High Holiday services.
“It doesn’t have the sex appeal of a lead guitarist,” said Ms. Goldfarb, a comedy writer and producer, whose career took off after her Instagram account featuring audacious pop culture commentary, became popular in 2016.
Ms. Goldfarb, a writer and producer for several shows, including HBO Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Northwestern. She is now working on an upcoming project for DreamWorks Animation in Los Angeles.
As a rambunctious 4-year-old, Mr. Gropper was visiting the rabbi’s office down the hall with his preschool class in Tustin, Calif., when he picked up a ram’s horn and effortlessly played it, leaving the rabbi amazed. As further encouragement, his paternal grandparents in New York sent him a shofar for his fifth birthday, which fell on Yom Kippur. He was invited to play it that day at Temple Beth Sholom in Santa Ana, Calif.
“I was a natural noisemaker,” said Mr. Gropper, 38, who now has 14 shofars, and can blast Happy Birthday on a ram’s horn and the theme to the film “Superman” on an antelope horn, with a seven-note range. “The instrument is a natural trumpet precursor to brass instruments,” he said.
Mr. Gropper, constantly matched up by members of Los Angeles’s Jewish community, finally said OK to friends to get them off his back, while Ms. Goldfarb leaned on the words of her paternal great-grandmother Hannah, “What do you have to lose?”
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Mr. Gropper, who is also the director of development, Western Region, at American Friends of Bar-Ilan University, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in religious studies focusing on ethnomusicology from San Diego State University and received a master’s degree in organizational leadership and innovation from Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles.
“I am single, Jewish and looking for a partner in Los Angeles,” he texted Ms. Goldfarb, who initially found him “disturbingly rizzless,” or lacking charisma, but then “refreshingly upfront,” and intriguing.
After they learned they lived an hour’s drive from each other — he in Venice Beach and she in Toluca Lake in the San Fernando Valley, he offered to drive to the Valley that Saturday evening for their first date.
“I really hope that’s who I’m meeting,” he recalled thinking when he spotted her in a long black dress at Cosette Wine Bar.
“She was beautiful,” he said, while she described him as “surprisingly tall and handsome.”
As a quick out, Ms. Goldfarb had texted earlier that she had a birthday party at 8 p.m. She got so swept up in conversation about family, their love of Los Angeles and food — particularly sour candy, gummies and tinned fish — he had to remind her about the party, which she had made up.
“My Persian mom put sardines in my lunch box,” said Mr. Goldfarb, who loves tinned fish so much that, between writing jobs during the pandemic, she co-founded Fishwife Tinned Seafood Co.
Like her, he enjoyed sprats, small herrings, which bowled her over, along with the extra loaf of artisanal sourdough bread in his car that he offered her from the Farmers Market. As they left, she reminded Mr. Gropper, so dazzled by her, about the bread he had offered.
“As they hugged good night, he asked her out again.
Two days later, they met at Carnival, a Lebanese restaurant, in a Sherman Oaks strip mall, “with harsh lighting,” she said, and “delicious food,” where each had visited while growing up.
The owner added a bit of romance, bringing out shots of Arak, an anise liqueur, followed by lentil soup, as they aligned on values and important questions like “do you want children?” he said. (They both desired to start a family.)
Later in the parking lot, after she dropped several hints, they kissed good night.
“We were off to the races,” she said, after their third date that Friday in downtown Los Angeles. He soon invited her to a Stevie Wonder concert, their favorite recording artist. He made sushi at home, and they bonded over grocery shopping, especially outings to Costco and “debating over which olive oil is superior,” she said.
On a nature walk in the Angeles National Forest, a stranger, who admired them as a couple, asked to take their picture.
“When I’m with Caroline, these magical things happen,” said Mr. Gropper.
In February 2025, they began to slowly introduce each other to their families, including his maternal “Grandma Rozzie,” whom he takes to the Los Angeles Philharmonic each year for her birthday, and for a Mahler concert that year, he invited Ms. Goldfarb along.
“This is my person, she is my family,” he recalled thinking about Ms. Goldfarb, as she and his grandmother hit it off afterward while looking at photos and chatting over tea at his grandmother’s house.
Mr. Gropper also embraced everything Persian about her family, especially the food — rice dishes like sabzi polo (Persian herb rice), tahdig (crispy rice) and stews at Shabbat dinners; and gondi (Persian matzo balls) at her uncle’s Super Bowl party.
After Mr. Gropper was invited to play the shofar at a Rams game at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., on Yom Kippur in 2025, he also worked out a way to propose to Ms. Goldfarb there.
On Oct. 2, at halftime, he blasted an oversize ram’s horn that he had borrowed from a community member.
“I wasn’t nervous in front of 75,000 football fans,” he said, but “I was nervous to propose,” and after the game, he got down on one knee midfield on the horn of the Rams’ team mascot. They celebrated at a private club at the stadium with 14 of their friends and family, including Grandma Rozzie.
On Feb. 7, Mr. Gropper, with a magnificent blast on his kudu antelope shofar, announced the bride’s entrance at Bel-Air Bay Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
“It was like the coronation of kings,” he said, “coronating my queen,” as surprised guests cheered. Ms. Goldfarb then walked down the aisle to Louis Armstrong’s trumpet-rich version of “La Vie En Rose,” a nod to her paternal grandmother Miriam’s favorite Édith Piaf song.
Rabbi Ari Averbach of Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, Calif., a cousin of the bride and a longtime friend of the groom’s family, officiated, before 131 guests, beneath a huppah draped in translucent silk organza and adorned with sepia-toned images of departed relatives.
The bride, who wore a white crepe gown designed by Jane Hill Bridal of Australia, and no stranger to designer shoes, was proud to say that her lacy, pointed kitten heels were from Target.
Later, in cool white Saucony sneakers featuring lace and pearls, she joined the groom for the traditional Iranian petal dance as guests showered the couple with flower petals. He wore a custom three-piece suit from Malibu Clothes in Beverly Hills, continuing a family tradition: his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had theirs made there as well.
“We had each written in our vows, without consulting each other, that we knew within the first month of dating that we’d found the love of our lives, and standing there, it felt undeniable,” Ms. Goldfarb said. “And in a more comedic but equally telling sign of alignment, we both independently mentioned Costco in our vows.”
On This Day
When Feb. 7, 2026
Where Bel-Air Bay Club, Pacific Palisades, Calif.
Ketubah Treasure Hunt Looking hard enough, one can spot a tiny can of fish on a Persian Shabbat table, a Costco shopping cart and three shofar players — the groom at sunset on Mount Diablo, Kermit the Frog and the Ram’s football team mascot — on their ketubah. With ever-so-fine brushes, sometimes two or three hairs, Elaine Adler, a Judaica artist, in Lexington, Mass., illustrated the couple’s courtship with dozens of playful details in colorful gouache around their marriage contract in Hebrew and English.
Kermit and Miss Piggy Take the Cake The duo spoke to the couple’s playfulness, and love story — opposites attract — as the cake-topper on their two-tier “corny corn flake cake,” with passion fruit curd and passion fruit buttercream. Gregory Rales, a friend of the couple who owns Red Gate Bakery in Manhattan’s East Village, made it, along with five sheet cakes.
Rockin’ With the Band During the reception, the groom joined the band on trumpet for Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish.” It was a complete and utter surprise, more than the proposal, Ms. Goldfarb said. “Michael hasn’t played trumpet in 15 years.” (Gorden Campbell, a former drummer from Earth, Wind & Fire, led the musical group.)
Chai and Gummy Candy: The couple’s wedding planner, Sara Simmonds, made sure chai tea flowed from samovars, bowls overflowed with fruit, and the table of Persian sweets was next to another with the couple’s favorite gummies and sour candy.
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